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In our bags, cupboards and garages are those guilty pleasures, luxury items that we somehow couldn't resist.

But why do we buy them? What makes us purchase, arguably, non-essential goods from cleansing gels to solar-powered dancing flowers?

Increasingly research is showing it's not just greed that drives consumption — we shop because of our innate primal instincts, because it creates a pleasurable response in our brains and even because of our genes.

Our shopping instinct is transformed from our hunter-gatherer instinct, according to US author Paco Underhill, who wrote the book Why we buy: The science of shopping.

Underhill took an anthropological view of shoppers, tracking thousands of consumers in the US, Italy and Australia to examine their shopping behaviour over several decades.

Unsurprisingly, he highlights the differences between the sexes when we shop.

"Women do have a greater affinity for what we think of as shopping — walking at a relaxed pace through stores, examining merchandise, comparing products and values, interacting with sales staff, asking questions, trying things on and ultimately making purchases," he writes.

"Most purchasing traditionally falls to women, and they usually do it willingly — even when shopping for the mundane necessities."

Men on the other hand shop like "loose canons", targeting what they want directly and having little patience for browsing.

Professor Charles Areni, from the economics and business faculty at the University of Sydney, says while generally women make more purchases to satisfy emotional needs, for all of us, shopping is a way to make ourselves feel better.

Shopping creates an environment to get together and interact socially or to reward ourselves, for example after a work promotion.

We shop to relieve stress, celebrate personal accomplishments, as a balm for depression and to make up for life's little disappointments, according to David Mick and Michelle DeMoss from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in early research in the Journal of Consumer Research.

A neural shopper

But what is happening in the brain when we decide to buy something? Research led by US neuroscientist Associate Professor Brian Knutson from Stanford University, California, in the journal Neuron, looked at the neural tug of war in our brains when we shop.

Contemplating a purchase fires up the nucleus accumbens, which plays a central role in rewarding us with increased production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, a pleasurable response also associated with food and sex.

But contemplating the price can activate the insula, a part of the cerebral cortex which is hypothesised to play a role when we contemplate loss.

When we decide to buy something, we're making both an emotional and a rational decision, says consumer psychologist, Adam Ferrier from the company Naked Communications and author of the blog consumerpsychologist.com.

"We have a desire to believe that we make rational decisions, when in reality we don't. This leads to clever marketers always appealing to our emotions, but having a rational reason embedded in the message," says Ferrier.

Take for example beer, says Ferrier. The advertising may be around 'mateship and belonging' — emotional advertising, but embedded in the message is a rational reason to purchase such as a 'crisp, dry taste'.

What we choose to buy — from chocolate to hybrid cars — and our purchasing habits, are influenced by our genetic make-up, according to research in the Journal of Consumer Research

Marketing expert Professor Itamar Simonson, of Stanford University and Assistant Professor Aner Sela, of the University of Florida, Gainesville, studied the consumer preferences of fraternal and identical twins.

"A greater similarity in behaviour or trait between identical than between fraternal twins indicates that the behaviour or trait is likely to be heritable," the authors write.

They found genetic links between certain shopping behaviours, such as a preference for essential items over indulgent options, or selecting sure gains over gambles.

They also found likings for specific items such as chocolate, mustard, hybrid cars, science fiction movies and jazz seem to have a genetic basis, but a predisposition for tomato sauce or tattoos doesn't.

Marketing tactics

The 'Gruen transfer' is the moment we become susceptible to impulse purchases when faced with a disorientating layout in malls and a huge selection of goods.
(Source: iStockphoto)

But while we may be programmed to shop, we have certainly been helped along in our endeavours by clever marketers.

For instance, advertisers rely on methods like distraction to make a sale. The term 'Gruen transfer', after shopping mall architect Victor Gruen, describes the moment when, faced with a disorientating layout and the cornucopia of display at shopping malls, we become mindless zombies, forget what we came to buy and become more susceptible to impulse buying.

But marketers need to be savvy with distraction and keep in mind the demographic of the shoppers, as well as the items people came to buy.

In Nature Neuroscience, Dr Adam Gazzaley at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that older brains are worse at screening out distracting information from advertising, indicating marketing aimed at older consumers should be simple.

Whether you're shopping in a supermarket or a mall is also important, says Areni. Larger supermarkets, where people make a lot of unplanned purchases, tend to put essential items towards the back to maximise the amount of time you're in the store.

"The idea is you want people moving past as much merchandise as you can. The simple rule is the longer you spend in the store, the more you are going to get out of their wallet," says Areni.

"Apparel stores need to be visually interesting and put their best stuff at the front — you can't gamble that people will go in."

Marketers can also exploit the way we are programmed to make decisions when faced with several options.

Rather than assess a product on its own merit, research shows humans weigh up the value of an item by comparing it against what else is on offer — a behaviour known as comparative valuation.

This is fine when we are weighing up two items, but when a third option is added to the mix it can change our perception of the first two goods on offer, leading us to make an irrational decision.

For instance, we might usually choose a cheap old car over an expensive sports car. But if a third option is offered — an expensive old car — the expensive sports car suddenly becomes more attractive.

However, we can take some comfort in studies showing this behaviour is innate, with bees, birds and even primitive organisms called slime moulds also susceptible to making quick, comparative decisions.

Reporting their findings on slime moulds earlier this year in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, University of Sydney biologists Dr Tanya Latty and Associate Professor Madeleine Beekman said this process of comparative valuation was "ubiquitous, if not universal, among biological decision makers", and was possibly a trait favoured by natural selection.

However, too much choice can have a negative effect on shoppers, leading to shopping fatigue.

"There is a lot of research that says the more choice there is, the harder it is to make a decision, and people will avoid making a decision if it's too hard, resulting in no purchase," says Ferrier.

"Marketers try to eliminate choice by making their brands develop a 'category of one', that is a new category without peer. Take the iPod for example, it's so different to what was previously on the market, that there is no choice between mp3 players, it's simply a case of 'I want an iPod'."

Future trends

In the future, marketing will become increasingly tailored to our consumer profiles and our phones could guide us to preferred products.
(Source: iStockphoto)

Modern marketers may have become savvy to our hardwired shopping behaviours, but how will they exploit these primal instincts in the digital age?

In the future, as we increasingly connect online using handheld devices like mobile phones, marketing will become more tailored to our consumer preferences.

So we might not be subjected to all of those penis enhancer ads of the early noughties, but we are more likely to be hit with ads based on our individual shopping and search profiles.

"Targeted marketing, like using Google searches to characterise your consumer habits, is set to increase," says Areni.

With a reduction in the costs of printable electronics devices based on nanoscale technologies, our phone could soon become a shopping tool, interacting with smart packaging on everyday items in the supermarket, according to US industrial chemist Ross Lee at a recent conference on neutrons and food in Sydney, NSW.

"It's not inconceivable you could go into a supermarket and your phone, based on your own profile, could guide you to the products on the shelves you should get or those you should avoid," he says.

Chi :

Josh :

08 Dec 2010 9:58:43am

I agree. When I read that I identified with the style of shopping, but not the description. 'Loose Cannon' would describe, to me, somebody who makes purchases flippantly and erratically. I would like to know exactly what the author meant by this.

babs :

26 Feb 2011 6:50:44pm

I agree with Josh. Loose cannon is not a description of someone that knows exactly what they want they want and goes directly to find it. ie. Definition of a loose canon: an individual who has little to no self control, does not think logically,whose grasp on reality is feeble. a seemingly misunderstood person who is in fact a walking disaster waiting to happen.e.g.one loose cannon spoils the bunch.Babs

Annie :

eve :

09 Dec 2010 7:51:47pm

while this research might be accurate for some people, the shopping experience is very different for me. i do very little, feel uncomfortable when buying non-essential items and can only tolerate minimal shopping excursions. oh...and i am a grandmother - and do enjoy one form of shopping - purchasing paints for the children to do their paintings.

Emma :

Dave :

26 Dec 2010 6:04:31pm

Of course it picks the overall trend. May I suggest the women visiting a scientific website like this certainly wouldn't be in the centre of the female bell curve for typical traits. For that matter neither would most men, fancy looking at this when I should be watching sport!

Kay :

11 Dec 2010 10:07:32am

I am surprised that this article has made little of the hunter-gatherer similarities. Typically, (male) hunters have worked as little as possible to find, kill and bring to camp their 15% cotribution to the group's diet-perhaps hunting only two or three times a month. On the other hand, (female) gatherers had to search for edibles, the staples on which the group survived, on a daily basis. Whereas any animal might be acceptable as a source of scarce (and therefore prized) meat, anything less than the choicest available fruits shoots and tubers would reflect poorly on the gatherer. Hence the necessity for careful inspection and comparison before selection. The gathering exercise would also be leisurely: females would be accompanied by their young whose size and capabilities would demand a relaxed pace whether they were walking or being carried by their foraging mothers.

simone :

13 Dec 2010 2:13:09pm

I think embedded in your grand assumptions is a personal frustration with your own household division of labour. How on earth would "any" meat be acceptable is a questionable assertion, given the host of diseases that rotting meat can sustain in comparison to fruit and nuts in particular, not to mention how much quicker it would have rotted.

Michael :

Jen :

11 Feb 2011 2:09:42am

Come on now people! This article is about how marketing manipulates people; and we discuss gender bias, because of an author's single line?

Meanwhile, the very foundational models of this marketing research is changing. Watch your Wal-Mart move the milk and eggs from the back of the store, to be more accessible. If they succeed, it will be followed in other big box stores.